Storage Optimization:

One of the biggest concerns expressed by CIO’s is the underutilization of resources. In my recent posts I talked about the need to understand what vendors actually mean when they refer to storage utilization and what percentage of the raw storage is actually available to the consumer for useful work. However device overhead is not the only resource thief, the operating system can significantly impact storage utilization or efficiency.

The best example is to compare the 40% +/- storage utilization common in open systems environments and the 80%+/- enjoyed by the mainframe user that have the benefit of a broad storage management toolset that has evolved in the mainframe space over many years.

However the open systems world is catching up with a number of innovative techniques that can be employed to significantly improve storage utilization.

The following chart summarizes optimization techniques and is extracted from Storage Panorama, an excellent reference and discussion on the data storage business.

However the most effective way to improve the useful utilization of storage resources is to avoid storing useless data. Data that has no corporate value is not only a financial burden but could become a legal liability in the event of an e-discovery event. Sound data management practices that identify and delete unnecessary data should be the first phase of any project designed to improve storage utilization.

1 Comments

Bill,
CIO's keep complaining but they keep trying to fix new problems utilizing old solutions. To a degree, CIO's are a huge part of the problem by looking to the same vendor products that's causing inefficiencies for solution to the problem. I've seen CIO's adopt the latest and greatest technology simply to stay on the cutting edge. Though these technologies had no benefit to their environment in any quantifiable way. Fancy terms are great to throw around i.e. "we're gonna virtualize and send all our services to the cloud" etc, but the reality is to stay one step behind the technology as a way to manage risks.
Therefore when complaints about under utilization surface, it's important to look into why and if resources are truly underutilized. Is it because too much technology has been procured or simply because we're allocating too many resources to minor processes?

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A commentary on today's storage industry, its issues, technology and general gossip. Innovative technologies that address the ...
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A commentary on today's storage industry, its issues, technology and general gossip. Innovative technologies that address the green IT and green storage issues will be a focus as will the evolution of state and federal energy conservation legislation and its likely impact on the IT industry.
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